My Favorite Leadership Question
The Amplified Impact Podcast
June 15th, 2023
Today, I want to share a sneaky little trick that I stumbled upon. It’s a game-changer when it comes to working with your team or giving advice to your loved ones.
Sometimes as a leader…I have this bad habit of jumping in and solving problems for people who should really be solving them themselves.
But here’s the thing, when we do that, we unintentionally stunt their growth.
We take away their chance to think for themselves and come up with their own solutions. And that’s not cool, right?
So, I recently learned this super effective question that can change the game. Are you ready for it?
It’s… “What do you think?”
I know, it sounds simple, but trust me, it’s powerful.
So, instead of instantly giving your opinion or providing a solution, you ask the other person what they think.
By asking, “What do you think?” you become a guide, helping them explore different angles, challenging their assumptions, and getting them to think more deeply.
Try it out and see the magic happen. Let’s empower others to find their own answers, embrace their decisions, and grow in the process.
TWEETABLE QUOTE:
“So that’s the gift that we can give the people that we are leading as managers or as business owners or just loved ones, partners is like helping people get to the answer themselves because it’s an answer then that they are going to get more fully behind.”- Anthony Vicino
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Episode Transcript:
Anthony Vicino [00:00:00]:
What’s up, everybody? Welcome back to the podcast. I want to share with you guys a sneaky, powerful question that I recently stumbled upon and how. And it’s it’s incredibly powerful when working with team members, when working with loved ones who are coming to you asking for advice, asking for an opinion or guidance. One of the things that I’ve had a really hard time with in the past in the role of leader is I have this tendency to sometimes just jump in and try to solve the problem for the person whose job it is to solve the problem. So if somebody comes to me and they’re like, oh, what do you think about doing this and this? And suddenly I find myself inserting my opinion very heavily. And because I can be very forceful or very opinionated and strong in my opinions, sometimes that can have the effect of making the other person on the other side think I’m giving a command or saying, this is how you must do it, when in reality, I’m just often talking about what I would do. And I have full confidence in my team member or whoever to run with that feedback, use what serves them and discard what doesn’t. But you have to understand that as the leader or the owner of a company, that often when we give that feedback to people, we stunt their growth.
Anthony Vicino [00:01:11]:
Because one, we’re doing the heavy lifting for them, and two, they often feel like it’s the safer route to then go with whatever was proposed by me or you, rather than coming up with their own ideas. Because if they come up their own ideas and it fails and it comes back, then they have to deal with, why did you go with this? And why didn’t you listen to what I said? Right. So one of the things that I learned very a long time ago, and I still struggle with it, is how to get people to find the answer for themselves. So when they come to me, a lot of times I would make it too easy for them to instead of struggling through the work and through the hard process of like, how should I solve this issue? If they came to me, they knew that they could just get the quick answer in a lot of cases because I maybe knew it more intimately, but it was stunting their growth. And so I started doing this thing. I’d ask this question that was kind of frustrating for some people, but my goal was, I’m not going to answer this question for you. I’m going to ask you questions like the Socratic method to help you get to the place where you’re answering it for yourself. Or if it’s one of those situations, like in a lot of situations of life where there isn’t like a clear cut right or wrong answer.
Anthony Vicino [00:02:30]:
It’s just varying shades of gray. And really it just comes down to your judgment and the probability of success with this decision versus that and can be very stylistic. It can be hard to say, like, was that the right choice? So in those cases, I try to get that other person to really think through it by asking this question, well, what do you think? It’s surprising how this one simple, stupid question actually gets people to open up and start exploring very openly. I most recently used this on my girlfriend Jamie, who came to me. She’s launching her own business, doing these retreats, yoga retreats with mindset and wellness and health and all these great things. And she’s like, how should I price this? And I was worried about inserting my opinion and then having that guide the conversation. So the first thing I ask is, well, what do you think? And let her start the conversation. Show me where she had done the heavy lifting.
Anthony Vicino [00:03:28]:
Show me where maybe the gaps in her logic were, or like, where there was opportunity to improve something. In a lot of cases, just asking that one question can save you a ton of heartache because you want to make sure before you ever give advice or try to guide somebody, that you’re starting from the same place. And often somebody comes to you and says, what do you think about this thing? And if you start giving your opinion on it, it might be giving in a way where they were completely it does not serve where they’re at at that point. And so just that simple question, well, what do you think? Work me through what’s gotten you to this place so far? And I find that’s really helpful to get their wheels turning. Gives me more context. If I am actually going to end up giving advice or an opinion of any sort, then at least it’s coming from a position where I have more context to the situation and what they’ve already thought through. Because the worst thing in the world is giving advice to somebody that they’ve already explored and saying, oh, you should do this, and like, I already tried that, right? And so you don’t want to put yourself in that situation by just shooting advice from the hip like a gunslinger in the wild, wild west. You want to make sure you’re more like a sniper.
Anthony Vicino [00:04:37]:
And that the advice. The opinion that you give is very targeted and hit the target. One shot, one kill, ideally. And so this question, well, what do you think? I find to be very, very powerful. It flips the relationship. It gives you an opportunity to ask more follow up questions like, oh, why do you think? What led you to that opinion versus this? Or It sounds like you’ve thought this through. Have you thought about this? Right? And instead of giving declarative answers, you just keep asking exploratory questions. That gets the other person to continue digging and digging and eventually they have guided themselves to a solution or to an answer and that’s going to be way more impactful than any solution that I or you can give them.
Anthony Vicino [00:05:21]:
And so that’s the gift that we can give the people that we are leading as managers or as business owners or just loved ones, partners is like helping people get to the answer themselves because it’s an answer then that they are going to get more fully behind. You’re not going to have to convince them that you’re right or that they’re wrong. That’s the worst situation. That’s a terrible situation. If you have to give somebody your advice and then convince them why you’re right, they’re never going going to be hard to get them bought into it. So if that advice is like self generated from them and they come to the conclusion that you were trying to get them to, perhaps then that’s way more impactful. So simple little managerial leadership question, little hack, little trick. Try it out.
Anthony Vicino [00:06:04]:
I think you’ll find it to be very, very impactful. What do you think? Okay, so that’s going to do it for me guys. I’m looking forward to seeing you back here tomorrow. But until then, stay hyper focused my friend.
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